Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) is one of the largest universities in Germany. With its five faculties, FAU offers an almost unique scope of subjects ranging from the Humanities to Law and Economics as well as Sciences, Medicine and Engineering. The close collaboration between the single disciplines is reflected by the University’s Mission Statement "Advance through Networks". FAU thus offers perfect conditions for interdisciplinary research and learning to students and scientists alike.

The School of Business and Economics is one of the leading institutions of its type with approximately 6,000 students, 34 chairs, contacts across the globe and one of the broadest ranges of subjects on offer at any university in the German-speaking world. Originally created to combine higher education with real-world experience, the School continues to serve as an important university think tank and a highly sought after local partner for the greater Nuremberg region. For more information see www.wiso.uni-erlangen.org/fakultaet/profil/

The focus is on the research of innovation impulses i.e. the sources of ideas for innovation. This includes the areas of idea management and open innovation, specifically when it comes to the involvement of users, suppliers and competitors. Additionally, other interdisciplinary topics that may have an impact on innovation impulses are dealt with specifically in the areas of regulation and legality.

In order to operate on the cutting edge, companies must always offer innovative products and services - this is also true for companies in the Nuremberg metropolitan area. Against this backdrop, companies are looking for solutions to improve their innovation process and alleviate existing problems. A low rate of innovation in practice shows, however, that this is quite a difficult task in reality.

For these reasons, quer.kraft was created in 2006 (initially as a working group and from 2008 onward as a registered association) as an innovation organization. The aim of the network is to promote the practice of idea and innovation management in enterprises with a scientific approach and to make companies more aware of the latest findings and approaches from research.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Erasmus Programme. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. The OI-Net public content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.